The omission would be of small consequence had not so many Android tablet makers chortled so loudly that their offerings deliver "the full web experience" - code for Flash support - because their chief rival, Apple's iPad, infamously does not.

Speaking of Dixons, a mole tells us that its Vega tablet has suffered from Flash playback woes, though again, this is expected to be sorted any moment now.

This is the problem with Flash. Every hardware and software combo needs to be certified by Adobe.

In the past, Intel often touted its Atom chip as superior to ARM because the standard platform it provides will run Windows and Linux Flash players out of the box. ARM-based devices need specially coded Flash players, because of the subtle differences in ARM chips, which are made by different vendors out of the technology templates ARM provides.

That's not a reason to abandon ARM - it has many advantages over Atom, not least its impressive power efficiency - but it shows how 'ARM plus Android' is not the standard platform you might assume it to be.

It also explains why so few other tablet makers are rushing to market with Android 3.0 Honeycomb devices. ®